Yes, and it was for perfectly good reason, or at least it was in my opinion. Here’s why, in long mode, trying not to rant but explain.
Up until the iPad, other than the lemur of course, people who used controllers were always stuck with “their” gear, because it was either expensive to get and/or replace, or wasn’t easily modified and changed, minus a few exceptions of which most reside on these forums anyway. Be it 4 CDJ’s and a mixer cause they liked the feel, or a VCI-100, or an APC-40. Whatever made them tick, right. Now that touchscreens are becoming affordable, where do they fit and who will find them useful, and for what purpose? Well, without using a touch controller, you would never have known that it is way easier to use touch fader for rapid movement, compared to a traditional fader, but easier for really fine adjustments with the traditional. On the same token, touch knobs are nearly impossible, whereas regular knobs depending on the application, size, range, and resolution might seem nearly as impossible also.
So, why not take one of the things that “traditional” DJ’s use against the controller guys, and make the entire thing a touch surface. Give it to the traditional guys and say, have fun, but what do you think and what works better? Just like the Dicer, give them options and us options, and see what comes of it. Hell, make a layout for every controller and let people use them, so they can figure out new techniques and ways of doing things that are different but easier, or not possible using the standard gear. More consumer touchscreens will come about other than the iPad, and if there becomes a larger market for touchscreen interfaces for DJing because some things just work better on a touch screen, we all benefit.
It also furthers the community of people who are using TouchOSC. And to illustrate that, I would like to point out that there are no circular buttons in TouchOSC. My layout has circular buttons. They are actually a horizontal rotary and vertical rotary overlapped and the midi feedback lights them both. I didn’t know this was possible until it happened, but now that it’s been done, circular buttons have a much higher chance of getting into the next update, which might be of importance to the next big layout that someone else designs.
So… the reason that all the buttons and labels that have absolutely nothing to do with the control available and the bad ergonomics of it all are in place for esthetic and cosmetic reasons. I’m currently figuring out ways to get more of the functions to work like a CDJ, but considering I don’t actually own one, it’s been quite a few trips to the guitar center to figure out certain functions.
Don’t forget, this is just a layout that I’ve thrown out, but it’s completely customizable using the TouchOSC editor.
. where’s the layout? did i miss it somewhere?